It is amazing what blows through the yard sometimes. Last year it was Blackpoll Warblers and this year it’s a couple of male Ruby-crowned Kinglets!
OMG – did your head just explode from the cute? Only the males have that little splotch of red, but they’re nearly identical otherwise. The boys raise their crests at each other as a warning to stay away from a territory or a mate. I didn’t see either of the ones in the yard raise theirs so there probably wasn’t a female nearby. Bummer, but I was so excited to see them I didn’t really care. This one flitted around on the edge of the woods where I could get relatively close to him up on my garden wall a few feet. Like with the Blackpoll Warblers last year, the height helped since these guys like to feed in trees and often very high overhead.
I must be getting better at birds because this shoot was doubly difficult. Not only are these guys very small and very fast, but I had 10mph winds with 20mph gusts to contend with. Tons of waving branches both behind and in front of the bird and that was confusing for the autofocus system so I’m glad I’ve had some practice with it. Also a couple of modifications to my Wildlife custom mode helped – I have the two front buttons on the camera programmed for near and far focus. That way when the autofocus finds the wrong spot like the background, I can hit the button for near and it will pull to the branches closer to me instead. It didn’t work perfectly every time, but it did enough so that I got these keepers. Right off the bat I deleted nearly 100 shots.
Most maps show the bulk of the breeding grounds for Ruby-crowned kinglets (Corthylio calendula) to be in Canada and the Pacific Northwest, but there are slivers in northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, so these guys might not have had as far to go as some. While the wind was hellacious, at least there were no leaves yet and so I had a clearer view of them than I would just a few weeks from now and certainly in their summer territory. The females lay one brood a year which is good because a clutch ranges from 6 to 12 eggs. That’s huge for such a tiny bird! Both parents raise the young. When they’re done they fly back to the southern US and Mexico. If they do make pitstops here again, I doubt I’ll see them with all the leaves.
As you can see, they are just as acrobatic as the Blackpolls and I think they’re feeding on the same thing which looks to be some tiny insects or possibly larvae or eggs. They flit about madly and are really difficult to track, especially at the long (400mm) end of my lens which has a really narrow field of view (3.1 degrees). Online guides and other sources say these guys will also hover and grab insects in the air like Phoebes or other fly catchers, but I didn’t see them do this. Would have been cool to watch, but I don’t know how good I’d be at photographing it.
I wasn’t as lucky with the light, but for this species, I’ll take what I can get. At least it was relatively bright and I didn’t have to go above ISO 1250 with a 1/1600th of a second shutter speed. And I thought photographing hummingbirds was hard – these guy are equally if not more difficult because they move in a much larger area than hummies do when I photograph them. Good for getting lots of time with the birds, but frustrating with all the branches that the autofocus picked up on instead of the bird. I switched to the single-area animal detect method and that seemed to work better than the custom multi method that worked better for hummingbirds. I was glad to have options to up my keeper rate.
What amazing little birds. I was so privileged to be with them for a short time and so glad I happened to notice them fooling around in the hornbeam saplings. Wisconsin isn’t known to be a hotspot for migratory birds, but we have our moments.
Cute little ball of feathers.
They really are. I saw them in another location not far from the house, so this area must be a good one for them to pause in. No photos from that spot because they were overhead and hiding a lot.
These are just marvelous! I think you did a wonderful job catching such a cutie – and your wildlife setup is good – it works. I think these are all beautiful, and some fun. The back side of the bird is cute as we seldom see a bird photo which shows tail feathers. We put in a bird feeder just recently and are seeing a lot of birds around it, but they have also migrated to the back yard. Songs all day long and jealous squirrels chattering away. Hawks have come by – lunch shopping no doubt – as well as woodpeckers and a few others. How much we enjoy them is not easy to put into words – there is a joy in just watching them.
Thanks so much. I felt quite privileged that they were so tolerant of me. These and many of my other yard birds aren’t feeder birds, but find the yard an acceptable habitat. The birds that do come to the feeder are mostly the usual suspects and they’re quite fun to have around – I totally relate. Hawks do use the feeders as lunch counters, but it’s how nature works. Only recently have we been leaving them out in summer. Normally we stop feeding the birds when the bears come out of hibernation – our local sow is famous for destroying bird feeders. Raccoons, too, can do a lot of damage, so we take the feeder in at night. We’ve had to move it up much higher, too, because deer stand up and get to it, so I need a ladder to get it up and down. Too funny.
We have ours under the eaves, so it is well protected, though the hawks are amazing at maneuvering in such a small arena. A hummer came by today – first one. Wondering if we should put out a feeder, too, but would it be too close? Raccoons are in our neighborhood, which always surprises me, as I think of them as night-time woodland critters. Deer, too, have been seen here, as well as coyotes, possums, rats (always rats) and squirrels.
I’m of two minds about hummingbird feeders – they can be a boon to them when it’s still kind of cold when they arrive and natural food sources are scarce. They are so territorial and adversarial that a feeding station – whether natural or manmade – is something they constantly fight over. Crowding so many into a small area must be stressful to them. Keeping the solution fresh and the feeder clean is key so that they don’t get fungal infections. Also taking it down quickly enough in fall is important since diminishing food sources are a signal to them that they have to migrate. So while I love seeing them, flowers seem a better way for me to have them around and not create a weird situation. Plus it’s more photogenic! We had coyotes singing yesterday morning at 6. It was kind of fun to hear them at such an odd time.
I get what you mean about the feeders, as well as the fact the birds are territorial. Here in the Conejo Valley in CA (north of LA) someone has a live feed with a lot of feeders out, and the hummers are always there en masse. Somehow that doesn’t seem quite right with me. I don’t know if they are year round here, but sending them “go south, young bird, go south!” is not something to mess with.
We get coyotes all throughout the night – yipping and howling – and it really is cool. Owls, doves, and others critters frequent the suburbs these days, and I hope we can all work well together.
Yeah, the overlap between “wild” spaces and the edges of ours is becoming deeper. My mom is in a very dense suburb and had a bear take down one of the nest boxes, eat the babies and destroy it. This never happened when I lived there in the 70s and 80s. Hopefully we can figure out a way forward.
Sad, isn’t it?
These 2 male cardinals always sat on a bush outside my bedroom window. They brought such joy to my day.
Those are gorgeous, too, and they sing so beautifully.